Fabricating Fashion?

Curating and Creating Pacific Fibre Arts and Adornments

In association with the first London Pacific Fashion Show, the AHRC-funded Fijian Art Research Project and contemporary Polynesian artist Rosanna Raymond convened a workshop-forum entitled Fabricating Fashion. This workshop sought to bring many of the finest contemporary fibre and textile artists of the Pacific Islands face to face with museum curators and conservators, academic researchers, and fibre arts enthusiasts. By sharing our artistic skills and practice, our opinions and reflections, our professional experiences and dilemmas, we hope to weave together a community of shared understandings.

Fabricating Fashion will help us to explore the contemporary relevance of Pacific fibre arts and textiles, how they relate to the body, how they are cared for and displayed in museums, and how they can coexist within themselves as both animated beings and objects in museum collections. Through handling and exploring materials, through reflecting and through discussing, we will draw out the threads of shared inspiration, meaning, history and responsibility that bind us together.